The present invention relates to an infant care apparatus and, more particularly, to an improved means of mounting a wristlet to the wall of an incubator.
In the use of infant incubators, handholes are commonly provided in a wall or door of the apparatus to allow the attending personnel access to the infant without the need to open a large door where there would be created an undesirable effect on the internal environment. With the user of handholes, however, certain procedures can be carried out on the infant with a minimum of disruption to that controlled atmosphere inside the infant compartment within which an infant is positioned.
The handholes themselves normally have doors to access the infant and, when closed, obviously preserve the internal environment. Along with the doors, when opened, there is also commonly used a sleeve or wristlet that comprises a flexible material that is affixed to the inner peripheral edge of the handhole and extends inwardly so as to fairly tightly encircle the hands of the personnel so as to, again, minimize the disruption to the protective internal environment within the infant compartment when procedures are carried out on the infant.
In general, such wristlets are affixed to an external flange surrounding the periphery of the handhole. Such wristlets are commonly retained to that external flange by means of a elastic band the surrounds the external flange. One difficulty of such common wristlets is that the elastic must be relatively tight about the external flange in order to retain the wristlet in position. Otherwise, the continual inserting and withdrawing of the hands through the wristlets that encircles the wrists can cause the wristlet to pull away from the external flange and become loosened from its mounting to the wall of the infant incubator and thus the attending personnel have to keep reinstalling the wristlet to assure it is properly functioning.
Accordingly, to retain the wristlet in position, the elastic must currently be extremely tight about the external flange and, thus, the further problem arises that the user of the extremely tight elastic makes it considerably difficult remove and replace the wristlet for cleaning, replacement ad the like. As such, therefore, the difficulty is in the alternative, the elastic needs to be very tight to retain the wristlet in position, however, as a result, the wristlet is very difficult to remove and/or replace.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a mounting means for a wristlet that securely locks the outside periphery of the wristlet firmly to the structure of the incubator wall so as to assure the continued integrity of the affixation of the wristlet to the incubator wall.
As used herein, therefore, the description will refer to the walls of the incubator, it being understood that by wall, the invention is used commonly employed, as is the handhole, in the door of an incubator and which will be considered a wall for purposes of the following description.